


A Wall (Not) Too Tall

by Stylin_Breeze



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Haikyuu!! Manga Spoilers, Hurt/Comfort, ankle injury, kind of a mix between the two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:22:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25370827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stylin_Breeze/pseuds/Stylin_Breeze
Summary: Hinata takes what was supposed to be a quick detour and ends up with Atsumu taking care of him.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou & Miya Atsumu
Comments: 6
Kudos: 35





	A Wall (Not) Too Tall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xBluerise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xBluerise/gifts).



> Thank you to NerdTree and to Crows_Imagine for betaing and other help.
> 
> This is an exchange gift for xBluerise. I hope you like it.

The bus squeaked to a halt in the driveway of an upscale hotel in Tokyo, ready to accept its modestly famous cargo. Black Jackals personnel hoisted luggage into the coach’s underbelly, while the distinguished athletes themselves mingled in the lobby, mostly unbothered by hotel guests.

On a coffee table in a corner of the lobby, Atsumu’s glass, coated in condensation, clinked when the ice broke and floated to the top. Hinata was stretched back on the opposite couch, texting Kageyama about the luxuriousness of the room he and Atsumu shared last night.

“You’re surprisingly calm,” Miya teased the wing spiker.

The Black Jackals were headed to Seoul, Korea, for a rare international exhibition game. It was the first time the Black Jackals would visit Korea for a match. Bokuto lauded all the cool stuff they’d see, Sakusa asked the internet for cultural hygiene standards, and Atsumu pretended to be cool and laidback, although team captain Meian teased him for being one of the most nervous of them all.

But Hinata…what Atsumu didn’t realize was Hinata took solace texting on his phone to clear his excitement.

He was texting Kageyama, because the Adlers last year had been selected for the foreign game.

“I think that’s near Ajinomoto,” Tobio replied when Hinata mentioned the hotel. Clearly Kageyama’s sense of direction had improved. He was referring to the national training center, where coincidentally Kageyama had attended the youth camp years ago.

The reply made Hinata sit up cross-legged on the couch. Miya peered at him. The ice in the glass threatened to melt.

With tenacity that took even Atsumu by surprise, Hinata immediately scoured the map on his phone for directions to the training center. It was but ten minutes away, if he ran.

“Hey, Coach! How much time do we have?”

Coach Samson Foster chatted with a hotel rep when the young player interrupted. Due to a logistics issue, it would take longer to load up than expected. He told Hinata about 30 minutes.

“Tsum-Tsum!” Shouyou cried, adopting Bokuto’s nickname by osmosis. “Can you show me the training center? I want a pic.”

Although the endless energy of Bokuto and Hinata usually suffocated him, Atsumu found the sprout’s reservoir more pleasing to the taste buds than his senior’s. The youthful vigor was on full display here as Shouyou Hinata bounced out of the hotel, almost too fast for Atsumu Miya to realize what was happening. He sprinted after the spiker, leaving the sweating glass to warm up in the lobby.

“Hurry!” Hinata shrieked as Atsumu tried to keep pace.

“Around that corner!” Miya called to give directions, although it was all he could do to not fall behind.

Shouyou skidded into the parking lot of the monolithic Indoor Training Center, the letters “AJINOMOTO” unostentatiously near the roof. Shouyou took a picture of the building first and then spun himself around for a selfie making a peace sign, a little blep for effect. Atsumu panted into the courtyard in time for Shouyou’s photo ops.

“Tsum-Tsum! Get in the pic!”

Atsumu smiled as he pattered into frame. He formed a soft grin, the building name above them like a caption.

“Why’d ya wanna see this so bad?” Atsumu said, gazing at the memories flooding back of the first time he met Tobio Kageyama.

“I’m gonna send them to Kageyama,” Hinata replied, and Atsumu’s nostalgia faded away.

“Oh? How come?”

“Just to show him I found the place where you two met.”

It wasn’t about the meeting with Atsumu that Hinata was concerned about, but that phrasing put Miya in a different state of mind, one a mix between forlorn and pensive.

So much had happened to bring them to this day, Atsumu realized with uncharacteristic maturity.

“Let’s head back,” Hinata said, trying to stuff the phone into his coat pocket that was a bit too shallow to safely carry electronics. Atsumu glanced for a moment when Hinata began to run while still trying to stuff the phone. Shouyou spun on his ankle and shoved harder. The change in his balance went into his feet. His ankle kept rolling farther than planned.

Then, before Atsumu’s eyes, Hinata was toppling to the ground.

“Shouyou!” Miya cried. Shouyou’s pride hurt more than his ankle, but only by a little. Adrenaline told him they needed to go, and Shouyou went to stand. But adrenaline wasn’t enough to convince his leg to put pressure on his quickly swelling Achilles.

Atsumu rushed to aid when Hinata went down once more. He promptly rolled up his teammate’s trouser leg to see the bloating joint.

“You can’t walk on this.”

“But the bus!”

“Screw the bus!” Atsumu yelled and dialed up the coach. Miya was brusquer than he needed to be but didn’t care. Coach Foster’s voice bellowed through the speaker so much Atsumu pointed the receiver at the sky until the venting finished. Then Coach Foster dispatched part of the crew to retrieve the pair and told them to stay put.

There were too many delays though; the rest of the team would have to go on ahead.

As they awaited assistance, Atsumu made Shouyou lie on his back and prop his swollen leg on the edge of a bench. He slipped off his shoe and rolled up the sock for air.

This was a blip. Snafus like this happened all the time, especially for some reason to the Jackals. Once, Bokuto left the hotel without his phone charged, got lost in the city, and miraculously showed up two hours before game time. Atsumu didn’t see it as a big deal, so Hinata’s next words surprised him.

“I’m sorry I made us late,” Shouyou pouted.

Hinata tried to take his mind off the embarrassment, looking up the picture he’d sent right before his fall. It had gone through to Kageyama, but the message didn’t have a read notice yet.

Telepathically, Atsumu knew who the spiker was thinking about: a man who even before Hinata entered the V-League Atsumu had privately classed as his rival.

Admittedly Atsumu Miya felt a twinge of jealousy, like he and Tobio had both seen the same toy (Hinata) in the store but Kageyama protectively declared “I saw it first!” But Atsumu Miya couldn’t change the past. Fate had brought the proto-Little Giant to Kageyama for a reason, and fate again had brought the Greatest Decoy to Atsumu Miya for a reason. How Shouyou felt about all this sometimes made Atsumu wonder.

“Hey. What’s it like gettin’ set by Kageyama?”

Shouyou didn’t feel violated by the question, and Atsumu wondered why he hadn’t bothered asking it sooner.

The answer surprised Atsumu: “You know, it never felt that special.” For Atsumu—a man of whom it was said his sets were of the caliber they could trick the spiker into thinking they’d magically gotten better—he couldn’t understand Tobio Kageyama being described as “never that special.”

“I was new to volleyball still. I wasn’t that good at a lot of stuff,” Hinata continued. “So I didn’t realize how good Kageyama was. He seemed like a jerk all the time, but a jerk whose sets I could hit.”

That pushed Atsumu into contemplation, and Hinata noticed. And he felt compelled to continue:

“Sometimes I thought my talent was because of Kageyama. And then you and Osamu were playing in the finals, and I saw how you set for him, and I thought…it’s not Kageyama who makes me good. I’m not tied to Kageyama. There are other good setters out there I could work with too.”

Atsumu unsuccessfully suppressed a blush. He thought back to those simpler days, how naïve he was, how blind and cocky he was.

“Thanks for sharing, Shouyou,” Atsumu said, worried it sounded a little banal and insincere. Recalling the days he spent setting to his brother led him to say something else.

“When I said after our first game that one day I’d set for ya, I really meant it. But when I think back, I had no plans on how I was gonna do that. But then, you came to me. And I can say now—” His grin shone as brightly as the sun overhead. “—I’m proud to be yer setter.”

Hinata smiled softly. “I’m glad I joined the Jackals and got to play with you.”

Nostalgia grabbed hold of Atsumu’s consciousness once more, and he couldn’t escape the flashbacks hurtling in, including of when he first saw Hinata…

And lost to him….

“Y’know, when I saw ya leave the court after fightin’ Hoshiumi, in my head I said it took me, those cat guys, and Hoshiumi’s team all to beat ya. But when I heard what really happened, I realized I was wrong: all the energy we put in to stop you just made ya fight harder. Yer the guy who, if he sees a wall, he’s gonna want to jump over it. And maybe that hurts ya sometimes, but I think that’s a good trait.”

Tsumu’s words summoned in Hinata a darker recollection, one of his defeated benching in his first nationals in high school. The words Takeda had said: “There are walls that you can’t get over with grit and gumption alone.” Hinata thought this was such a wall right now.

But not an insurmountable one.

What was it Takeda said was necessary to conquer those: “knowledge, a level head, and most of all, thoughtfulness.”

Hinata _knew_ more now: he knew his injury was nothing to worry about, that it would subside in no time and wouldn’t bench him in the game. It took a _level head_ to even come to that conclusion. As for being _thoughtful_ ….

“Whether it be small walls or big walls,” Atsumu said, “every day, I look forward to ya jumpin’ over ’em like they’re nothin’. And I look forward to bein’ a part of it too….”

…As for being thoughtful, Atsumu was doing a good job of that right now.

A pattering of feet hailed the hasty arrival of the medical team, a wheelchair in tow. Atsumu assisted Hinata into the chair quickly. Another bus had already been arranged, and they just needed to be back at the hotel and ready. Hinata seemed entirely content right now. Sakusa once said he wanted to go out thinking he could be done at any time and still be satisfied; Atsumu realized that was an accurate description of Hinata’s attitude right now too.

When Shouyou was ferried into the replacement bus later, Kageyama texted back.

“Neat,” he typed with anticlimactic simplicity.

Shouyou wasn’t disappointed.

“Tsum-Tsum, thanks for setting for me all the time.”

Atsumu felt a force bubbling in his chest. He couldn’t believe how flattered he felt. And gazing at the waning sun, he thought of his brother, the man whom he once loved to set for more than anyone:

_My bet still stands, Samu. When I’m 80, I’m gonna tell you I had the happier life._

Hinata’s presence ensured that would be true.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.  
> ~Breeze


End file.
